Empowering Young Minds Everywhere: Five Teams Advance to Final Round of $15M Global Learning XPRIZE

18.9.2017 12:00 | Business Wire

Del

Today, XPRIZE,
the global leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to
solve humanity’s grand challenges, announced the five finalists
advancing in the $15M Global
Learning XPRIZE and awarded each finalist a $1M milestone prize.
Revealed at this year’s Social Good Summit held during the United
Nations General Assembly week, XPRIZE awarded each finalist for the open
source, cutting-edge learning software they have developed for the
competition, which challenges innovators around the world to create
scalable solutions that will enable children to teach themselves basic
reading, writing and arithmetic within 15 months. The five finalist
teams will begin field testing their education technology solutions this
November in Tanzania.

“Universal access to education is a major priority for XPRIZE, and we
are proud to celebrate the change-making teams making impressive strides
to ensure every single child has the opportunity to take learning into
her own hands,” said Marcus Shingles, CEO of XPRIZE Foundation. “The
leading solutions born from this competition could provide the key to
unlocking literacy for children most in need, giving them access to an
education they otherwise wouldn’t have.”

The following five finalist
teams were chosen from a field of 198 teams by an independent
judging panel of 11 experts:

CCI (New
York, United States) is developing structured and sequential
instructional programs, in addition to a platform seeking to enable
non-coders to develop engaging learning content in any language or
subject area.

Chimple (Bangalore,
India) is developing a learning platform aimed at enabling children to
learn reading, writing and mathematics on a tablet through more than
60 explorative games and 70 different stories.

Kitkit
School (Berkeley, United States) is developing a learning
program with a game-based core and flexible learning architecture
aimed at helping children independently learn, irrespective of their
knowledge, skill, and environment.

onebillion (UK/Malawi/Tanzania)
is merging numeracy content with new literacy material to offer
directed learning and creative activities alongside continuous
monitoring to respond to different children’s needs.

“Our five finalists are developing the most promising software solutions
to enable children to teach themselves basic reading, writing and
arithmetic, as determined by our panel of expert judges,” said Matt
Keller, senior director of the Global Learning XPRIZE. “As we move to
the final field testing phase, we are one step closer to scaling
transformative technology solutions that foster child-driven learning
and provide a world-class education for all.”

To field-test the five finalists’ solutions, the Global Learning XPRIZE
partnered with the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the
Government of Tanzania. Approximately 4,000 children in 150 villages in
the Tanga region of Tanzania will use 8,000 Pixel C tablets donated by
Google to test the top software solutions for approximately 15 months.

At the end of the field testing phase, the team whose solution enables
the greatest proficiency gains in reading, writing and arithmetic will
receive the Grand Prize of $10 million, to be announced in April 2019.
Each of the five finalists will be required to open source both their
code and their content which will be free and available for anyone to
build on.

An estimated 250 million children around the world cannot read, write,
or demonstrate basic arithmetic skills. UNESCO estimates that the world
will need 1.6 million more teachers globally, a number set to double by
2030. The Global Learning XPRIZE will help prove that with the right
resources, children can teach themselves to read, write and do
arithmetic. By ensuring each finalists’ solutions are open source,
XPRIZE also aims to proliferate solutions worldwide at the intersection
of technology and learning.

For more information about the competition structure, important dates,
and the competing teams please visit learning.xprize.org.

About XPRIZE

XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the global leader in designing and
implementing innovative competition models to solve the world’s grandest
challenges. XPRIZE utilizes a unique combination of gamification,
crowd-sourcing, incentive prize theory, and exponential technologies as
a formula to make 10x (vs. 10%) impact in the grand challenge domains
facing our world. XPRIZE’s philosophy is that—under the right
circumstances— igniting rapid experimentation from a variety of diverse
lenses is the most efficient and effective method to driving exponential
impact and solutions to grand challenges. Active competitions include
the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE, the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, the $15M
Global Learning XPRIZE, the $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, the $7M
Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE, the $5M IBM Watson AI
XPRIZE, the $1.75M Water Abundance XPRIZE and the $1M Anu and Naveen
Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE. For more information, visit www.xprize.org.